Truth Commissions in Post-Communism: The Overlooked Solution?

Stan, Lavinia

doi:10.2174/1874949600902010001

Cited by 16 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…In Romania, the work of the International Commission for the Study of the Holocaust, in its capacity as a legal, institutional response to past injustices and human rights violations remained without much resonance. 24 I suggest that, while officially sanctioned by two Romanian presidents in 2003, the Final Report was poorly received for two main reasons. 1the memory of the Holocaust was perceived as remote and with little relevance for the postcommunist present.…”

Section: Romania: Historical Legal and Socio-political Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hopeless Didacticism: Archival Sources and Spectatorial Address in ‘I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians’

Popa

2019

Law, Culture & the Humanities

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This paper examines “Îmi este indiferent dacă în istorie vom intra ca barbari” / “I Do Not Care if We Go Down in History as Barbarians” (Radu Jude, 2018) (hereafter “Barbarians”), a film that explores the persistence of problematic official narratives about the Romanian participation in Second World War. I argue that this is a narrative film akin to conceptual art, in which formal elements combine with a variety of heterogenous media, such as archival still and moving imagery, to provide ‘evidence’ about the past while also reflecting on historical truth’s fragility to propagandistic manipulation and on the role that media, film included, can play in it. Through close analysis and drawing on recent theorising on the cinematic dispositif, this article examines the ways in which “Barbarians” encourages complex text–viewer relationships and eventually thwarts spectators’ expectation of being presented with a ‘final truth’. It ultimately reveals the inevitable multitude of perspectives about the past, highlighting the risks of failure that any pedagogical attempt to ‘fix memory’ will face.

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Section: Romania: Historical Legal and Socio-political Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hopeless Didacticism: Archival Sources and Spectatorial Address in ‘I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians’

Popa

2019

Law, Culture & the Humanities

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“…Perhaps only someone born in France still notices that the Victory Monument in Bangkok celebrates a Thai victory over the French in Laos in 1941, at a time when French Indochina was dominated by the Japanese and France itself was helpless. 49 In short, there were no hostile Asians the Japanese needed to placate or listen to until much later when a recovered South Korea and an emergent China began to make demands for apologies. By then, the pattern of Japanese denial had been fixed for a long time.…”

Section: Why World War II Memories Remain So Troubled In Europe and E...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Remembrance, History, and Justice. Coming to Terms with Traumatic Pasts in Democratic Societies

Đureinović

2017

Europe-Asia Studies

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Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini. He had been a collaborator with the Radio Division in the German Foreign Office during the Nazi regime, but in the postwar period, he became a member of the leadership in Palestine without being forced to change his views; he continued to combine anti-Zionism with visceral hatred of the Jews. Herf remarks that in the aftermath of gross human rights violations, there is tension between rapid democratization and judicial reckoning. In his view, the evolution of memory politics in Germany shows that where elements of the old regime persist and where foreign occupation has not taken place, as is the case in most post-dictatorial settings, the ability of the successor democracy to explore the traumatic past has been much weaker. However, by bringing into the discussion Husseini's case, he insists on the vital importance of the complete delegitimation of anti-Semitism and of the support for anti-democratic politics for allowing the possibility of coming to terms with the past. Similar to Chirot, Herf concludes that Germany was an exception because foreign powers and past democratic traditions eventually tipped the balance in favor of memory, despite the existence of widespread cynicism, opportunism, hypocrisy, and amnesia in the postwar period.The last chapter in this section adds an additional facet to Herf's general observations. Romanian political scientist, Alexandru Gussi, underlines the connection between deliberate politics of forgetting and biased politics of memory in post-communist Europe and the collective feelings of frustration among individuals living in this region's societies. He shows how the instrumentalization of the past subverted the moral weight that collective remembrance could potentially carry after 1989. Ultimately, Gussi's conclusions remain within the interpretative framework of the other contributors in the section: politics of memory are an integral part of democratization, but the latter process neither guarantees nor presupposes a genuine confrontation of the past. But the consequences of institutionalized amnesia or selective remembrance are dire on the long term, as they conceal societal tendencies that can severely subvert the very building of democracy.This insight is the stepping stone for Part Two of the volume, which discusses the relationship between the historicization of the past and the dynamics within different publics directly affected or involved in the process of dealing with past. Vladimir Tismaneanu's opening contribution is an essay that fulfills a double function. On the 12 REMEMBRANCE, HISTORY, AND JUSTICE Petrović underlines that as the Milošević trial moves from the legal field to join the ongoing memory wars over his role in the Yugoslav wars, its achievements ought not to be measured solely from the point of its procedural outcome. Despite the protracted and almost unmanageable nature of the proceedings, the trial produced a massive body of evidence, inspiring further proceedings on both the international and national level.The nex...

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“…Of course, the historical commissions created in Estonia on state initiative to deal with the totalitarian past are not an exceptional phenomenon. Over the last couple of decades, analogous institutions have been created almost everywhere in East and Central Europe and even further afield (Stan 2009c;Hiio 2010). It is a phenomenon that can, on the analogue of transitional justice, be called "transitional history" (Teitel 2000, 60).…”

Section: The Institutional Dimension Of Memory Politicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

In search of lost time: Memory politics in Estonia, 1991-2011

Tamm

2013

Natl. pap.

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This article analyzes memory politics during the first 20 years of the newly independent Estonia. Memory politics is understood as a politics endeavoring to shape the society's collective memory and establish notions of what is and is not to be remembered of the past, employing to this end both legislative means and practical measures. The paper presents one possible scheme for analyzing Estonian memory politics and limits its treatment in two important ways. Firstly, the focus is on national memory politics, that is the decisions of the parliament, government, and president oriented toward shaping collective memory. And second, only internal memory politics is discussed; that is, bi-or multilateral memory-political relations with other states or political unions are not examined separately. The analysis is built on four interrelated dimensions of memory politics, which have played the most important roles in Estonia: the legal, institutional, commemorative, and monumental dimensions. Also, a general characterization and temporal articulation of memory politics in newly independent Estonia is proposed.

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Truth Commissions in Post-Communism: The Overlooked Solution?

Cited by 16 publications

References 23 publications

Hopeless Didacticism: Archival Sources and Spectatorial Address in ‘I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians’

Hopeless Didacticism: Archival Sources and Spectatorial Address in ‘I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians’

Remembrance, History, and Justice. Coming to Terms with Traumatic Pasts in Democratic Societies

In search of lost time: Memory politics in Estonia, 1991-2011

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